Mekotronics R58 review – Part 1: Rockchip RK3588 mini PC unboxing & teardown

Mekotronics R58 review Rockchip RK3588 mini PC

Mekotronics R58 is a cost-optimized Rockchip RK3588 mini PC and SBC that sells for as low as $169 with 4GB and 32GB eMMC flash. The company has now sent me a model with 8GB RAM and 64GB flash for evaluation, and in the first part of the review, I’ll do an unboxing, check out the hardware more closely, and boot it up for a quick check. Mekotronics R58 Unboxing There’s no retail package so to speak with just a white box and a sticker reading “MINI 8+64G” indicating the RAM and storage capacity for the device. The mini PC ships with a 12V/3A power adapter and cord, an IR remote control with two AAA batteries, two WiFi antennas, an HDMI cable, and a USB-A to USB-C cable probably to flash the firmware if needed. The mini PC is housed in a metal enclosure with plenty of ventilation holes at the […]

ESP32-C5 RISC-V IoT MCU supports dual-band WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0 LE

ESP32-C5

Espressif Systems ESP32-C5 is an upcoming wireless RISC-V microcontroller for IoT applications that supports dual-band (2.4 & 5.0 GHz) WiFi 6 connectivity as well as Bluetooth 5.0 LE. It is the first dual-band processor from Espressif, as while the Shanghai-based company previously announced the ESP32-C6 WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5 LE RISC-V SoC last year, it only supports 2.4 GHz frequency. Note it’s not the first dual-band WiFi 6 IoT chip on the market as NXP introduced the IW612 Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, 802.15.4 tri-radio solution last January, but ESP32-C5 should target different use cases. ESP32-C5 preliminary specifications: CPU – Single-core 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 240 MHz Memory – 400KB SRAM on-chip Storage – 384KB of ROM on-chip, support for external flash Connectivity Dual-band 802.11ax WiFi 6 in the 2.4GHz and 5 GHz bands, with 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 standard support for backward compatibility 20MHz bandwidth for the 802.11ax […]

MediaTek unveils Filogic 830 & Filogic 630 WiFi 6/6E chips

MediaTek Filogic 830

MediaTek has recently introduced the Filogic connectivity family with two parts, namely the Filogic 830 Wi-Fi 6/6E system-on-chip (SoC), and the Filogic 630 Wi-Fi 6E network interface card (NIC) solutions. The WiFi 6/6E tri-band (2.4, 5, and 6 GHz) chips are Wi-Fi Alliance EasyMesh certified, and designed for home, business, and enterprise router and repeater devices, home automation bridges, IoT gateways, as well as consumer devices such as laptops, TVs, IP cameras, etc… The MediaTek Filogic 830 is a complete 12nm SoC with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at up to 2 GHz per core delivering over 18,000 DMIPs, hardware acceleration engines for Wi-Fi offloading and networking, dual 4×4 Wi-Fi 6/6E for up to 6Gbps connectivity, two 2.5Gbps Ethernet interfaces, and various other peripheral interfaces, but MediaTek did not provide any details about those. The company also says the chip includes FastPath low latency technology for gaming and AR/VR applications. […]

UGOOS AM7 Android 11 TV box with Amlogic S905X4, WiFi 6 is up for pre-order

Ugoos AM7

When Ugoos AM6B Plus 2021 TV box was introduced with Amlogic S922X-J and WiFi 6, we noted the company was working on UGOOS AM7, a more affordable TV box that also supports WiFi 6, and comes with the latest Android 11 running on Amlogic S905X4 processor with 4K AV1 video playback. UGOOS AM7 is now available for pre-order on Aliexpress for around $128 including shipping. The device includes 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC flash, 4K HDR video output at up to 60 Hz, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFI 6, and Bluetooth 5.0. Ugoos AM7 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X4 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor with Arm Mali-G31 MP2 GPU System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash storage Video Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 4Kp60 with HDR, HDCP 2.2, CEC support;  3.5mm AV port with composite video (and stereo audio) Video Codecs 4Kp60 AV1, VP9, H.265/HEVC, H.264 AVC 1080p60 H264 MVC, MPEG-4, […]

UP Xtreme i11 Tiger Lake SBC launched for $299 and up

UP Xtreme i11 Tiger Lake-SBC with AI accelerator

Ever since the launch of Intel Atom Cherry Trail powered Up Board SBC in 2015, AAEON has kept launching more UP boards with faster, yet still low power processors, as well as complete turnkey solutions based on their x86 SBC such as the UP Xtreme Smart Surveillance kit. The company has now started taking pre-orders for the UP Xtreme i11 Tiger Lake SBC, and a UP Xtreme i11 Edge Compute Enabling kit mini PC based on the board will become available in Q3 2021. The board features a choice of Intel 11th generation Tiger Lake Embedded “GRE” Core or Celeron processors, an Intel Altera MAX V FPGA, up to 64GB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, 2.5GbE networking, and more. UP Xtreme i11 SBC Specifications: Tiger Lake “E”/”GRE” SoC (one or the other) Intel Core i7-1185G7GRE quad-core/8-thread processor @ up to 4.4 GHz with 96 EU Intel Iris Xe Graphics; up to 28W […]

ROCK 3A SBC brings M.2 slots for NVMe SSD, WiFi 6 to Raspberry Pi form factor

ROCK 3A

Radxa ROCK 3A is a single board computer powered by Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor that closely follows Raspberry Pi 3 Model B form factor like the early Rock Pi 4 SBC, but with a twist. By switching from a Rockchip RK3399 to a Rockchip RK3568,  the board loses some CPU and GPU performance, but gains extra I/Os with enabled the company to add an additional M.2 slot with PCIe to ROCK 3A board, meaning it’s now possible to attach one NVMe SSD and another M.2 module like a WiFi 6 M.2 card. ROCK 3A preliminary specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex A55 processor at up to 2GHz, with Mali G52 GPU, 0.8TOPS NPU System Memory – 2GB, 4GB, 8GB LPDDR4 3200MT/s, up to 1560MHz Storage Pluggable eMMC module MicroSD card slot M.2 M key socket for NVMe with PCIe 3.0 x2 lanes 4MB SPI flash with support for […]

NXP i.MX 8 SoMs and SBC get WiFi 6 upgrade via u-Blox JODY-W3 module

We’ve just written about a WiFi 6 M.2 card based on JODY-W3 module that works with NXP i.MX 8 evaluation and development kit. But the u-Blox module appears to be the solution of choice for other NXP i.MX 8 platforms, as well as iWave Systems upgraded their existing systems-on-module and one single board computer with JODY-W3 adding WiFi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.1. iW-Rainbow-G27S SBC with WiFi 6 We first covered iW-Rainbow-G27S single board computer in January 2020. The board comes with NXP i.MX 8QuadMax hexa-core Cortex-A72/A53 processor, up to 8GB RAM, quad display support via HDMI, eDP & MIPI DSI, dual Gigabit Ethernet, and more.  At the time, the board was offered with optional 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 + Bluetooth 5.0, but now adds 802.11ax WiFi 6 connectivity for higher bandwidth applications. iW-RainboW-G27M SMARC and QSeven modules get 802.11ax & Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity iWave Systems iW-RainboW-G27M was introduced as […]

Low-cost embedded router SBC offers 2.5 GbE, WiFi 6 through Qualcomm IPQ5018 SoC

IPQ5018 embedded router board- AP.MP03

Wallys Communication has been offering Qualcomm-based embedded router boards for several years, including the higher-end DR8072A with dual 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 connectivity, followed by a lower-cost WiFi 6 SBC based on IPQ6010 with Gigabit Ethernet ports. But if you’d like to benefit from the lower cost while keeping WiFi 6 and 2.5GbE, the company has now introduced a new model based on Qualcomm IPQ5018 dual-core Cortex-A53 SoC, also found in Xiaomi Mi AX6000 router, with DR5018 embedded router board. The blurry photo above reveals the board is also called AP.MP03, a name that looks like the typical name for Qualcomm reference designs. DR5018 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros IPQ5018 dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.0 GHz System Memory – 512MB DDR3L Storage – 4GB or 8GB eMMC flash, 4MB Nor Flash, 128MB NAND flash Networking 4x Gigabit Ethernet Ports or 1x 2.5Gbps Ethernet port 1x Gigabit Ethernet Port On-board […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC